Term Limits for Congress
We need term limits for congress people. We have some folks in the house and senate that have served for their entire lives. These folks cannot possibly represent the interests of their constituents since they don't have lives anything like the people they represent any more.
They've average ages of a senator in the united states is nearly 62 years, with many being much other than that (it's an average after all). The retirement age (we'll go with when you can get Social Security benefits) is somewhere around 65-67 years old. Which means that the people of this country, whose median age is somewhere in the 40's, isn't represented by our generation!
I'm not saying that the older generation doesn't have great things to offer in leadership, I want their input, but since there are no limits to serving in congress, we are being limited into the viewpoints from multiple generations ago.
Rather, we should have congress people be limited to something like 2 terms with an age ceiling relative to the retirement age. If you're old enough where society expects you to retire from the work force, you shouldn't be representing the work force!
This would also increase the turnover of our representatives, giving more people the chance to serve and reducing the impacts of incumbents. It would also tie the representatives closer to their people, since those folks are gonna have to live in the area they've setup. Will their choices improve their local society?
Today, it doesn't matter. They live in DC, they look to cultivate multi-generational power. They can spend a lifetime getting hands dirty and building influence. But maybe if we took that away, we could get some of those leadership skills at the local level. Maybe we can have less infighting, since we won't have entrenched seats of power for multiple decades foisting their opinions on the people that disagree.
Imagine how much harder it would be to buy politicians if they had a shorter shelf life. Today, you can spend years working to corrupt a politician and reap the rewards of that corruption for decades. With term limits, even an irredeemably corrupt politician can only have power for a limited scale — reducing the blast radius of their corruption.
Term limits could also reduce the existence of career politicians. These folks are a danger to democracy, as they are focused more on keeping their jobs than doing their job — serving and representing the people. It drives me crazy when my representatives spend time campaigning for their new job while they have a current job! If you're a governor and want to be a senator, why should you be able to take time out of your governor day job to campaign for a seat as senator?
I'd never get away with spending so much time searching for a new job while at a current one. Not a chance!
As the employer of my representatives, senators, and other leaders, I want them working for me not themselves. I want our incentives to be aligned and I want to succeed together. Not watch them get fat making things worse for me.
In short:
- Reasonable term limits for representatives, per category
- Reasonable age limits for representatives relative to the “retirement age”